Kate Bush has wished her fans a merry Christmas in a new message, in which she touches on war, developments in artificial intelligence (AI) and what she learned from seeing Monet’s paintings.
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In the lengthy message, she thanks fans for the support for her new short film, Little Shrew, a black-and-white animation she wrote and directed in aid of War Child. “Little Shrew will be getting a bowl of especially delicious earthworms this Christmas morning,” she said.
Bush also mused upon the current fraught political situation across the world but noted that she wanted her Christmas message to be one of positivity.
“It’s been another year of exceptionally dark news. It just keeps getting worse, doesn’t it?” she wrote.
“The wars keep raging. We helplessly stand and watch as those poor people are caught up in the horrors of it all and of course there are the children…
“It’s hard not to focus on the worry we all feel about these conflicts and the massive changes that are happening around us, but I’d like to try to find something positive to say for this Christmas message:”
Bush said that Christmas Eve was one of her favourite days of the year. “When I was a child, it used to have a special feeling,” she explained. “It even had a sort of Christmas Eve smell… a mixture of smoking coal fires and damp leaves, all bundled up in a drizzly English frozen fog. If I really work on it, I can still summon it up on the day. I’m working on it now…”
She recalled seeing a new exhibition on Monet’s paintings and relating the French artist’s perception of industrialisation to modern anxieties around AI.
“Is that us? Standing in awe at the dawn of AI, the symbol of modernity, as smog was for Monet at that time in the newly industrial London? Do we only see the twinkling light of the new invention, which so often catches the eye of our imagination… and what are those vague, dark sardonic shapes we can see in the background, behind the theatrical gauze?” she wrote.
“It’s hard to make them out, but could they be our human pods, like those from the Matrix, being readied for us by eager, playful digits? Or maybe they are freshly painted bridges – robust, and lovingly built to carry us all into a much longed-for new age of healthy thinking?
“All will be revealed when the smog begins to clear.
“Merry Christmas everyone. I hope it’s a really joyful one for you all.”
Earlier this month, Bush signed a petition speaking out against AI using artists’ work without permission.
The campaign emerged earlier this year and states that “the unlicensed use of creative works for training generative AI is a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works, and must not be permitted”.
The petition currently has 36,000 signatures and reads that, without government intervention, the practice creates “a major, unjust threat to the livelihoods of the people behind those works”. You can sign the petition and find out more here.
In other news, Bush recently said that she has “lots of ideas” she wants to pursue now she is ready to create new material.
“I’ve been caught up doing a lot of archive work over the last few years, redesigning our website, putting a lyric book together,” she explained.
“And I’m very keen to start working on a new album when I’ve got this finished. I’ve got lots of ideas and I’m really looking forward to getting back into that creative space, it’s been a long time.”
Asked if it was something she had been hoping to do for a while, Bush replied: “Yes it is, really. Particularly the last year, I’ve felt really ready to start doing something new.”
